


Napi, walking the trenches

by killing_rose



Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Blackfoot origin stories, Gen, Native story telling, Tricksters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 12:35:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11290845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/killing_rose/pseuds/killing_rose
Summary: The story they tell on the reservation, about Chief, and Diana, and the War to End All Wars at the dawn of another war.





	Napi, walking the trenches

Old Man shaped the world. He came from the South, and he made the mountains and the prairies and the forest. Without Old Man, what world would this be? No earth beneath our feet. There would no Milk River, and then what would we drink? No animals, and then what would we eat? How would we live? Without Old Man, we would be nothing. 

But Old Man was as wise as he is sometimes foolish, and he knew that earth and water was not enough. He gave us grass for the animals he had not yet made. He gave us the food we eat. Not White men's food. Not the things the Government Man makes us eat. But the food of the time before, before the wagons came West, before the traders came with their promises and lies, when we were free. 

He gave us camas, carrots, turnips, bitterroot, bulberries, cherries, plums, and rosebuds. He planted more trees than you and I have ever seen. The White men needed trees for their houses, the ones that encroached on Old Man's land. On our land. Their "progress" marched ever Westward, into places that were as Old Man had made them, breaking the spirit of the land. Progress, and the White man's insatiable hunger, led to the last war. The one we lost, the one that cost us our freedom. You could argue the same led to the White man's War to End All Wars. I would argue that they are bloodthirsty and have no respect for anything, but I have seen their people try to eradicate us our entire lives. Remember that, and never accept the Government's hospitality. 

We are hunters, this our legends tell us. We are hunters, this your clothes that we hide from the Government men tell us. Our ancestors left us skins of the prairie thunder that has passed from our world, an animal you have never known. This was evident in the food we ate. The food we still make when we can. (When the Government man isn't looking.) It was not all berries and roots, though both are tasty. You will note that even the White man likes carrots and cherries and plums. In this one thing, they are not stupid. 

Old Man made us the bighorn sheep. And even Old Man can be foolish, for he thought this creature was one of the plains. It was big and it was heavy, and it traveled awkwardly. Remember that even gods are human sometimes. He tried again, for never say Old Man doesn't rethink his decisions --the story of the rock and the robe should tell you that, child--, for he took the bighorn into the mountains. There, there the bighorn thrived. Our brother was built to walk the crevices and the rocks, and to hunt them is to approach them on their own territory. It's a tricky hunt, and you should remember this. The White man... I am not sure any of them could hunt the bighorn, but then again, they are butchers, not hunters.

The antelope, the story of the antelope is so similar to the bighorn. Old Man created the antelope to roam the mountains, but this was not where it belonged. Old Man watched the antelope and took him to the prairie. "So this is what you are suited for, the broad prairie," and there they roamed, with the prairie thunder and so many others. Like so much else, it broke Old Man's heart when his animals, his creations, started disappearing, because the White man had never met respect in his life. Do not forget, child, what separates us from them. Never take a life without giving thanks for what they give you. Never take a life unless you must. This, you will need, to keep your heart and soul intact from what will happen. This I know from the last white man's war.

We respect the animals we eat, and the roots and fruit we harvest. This is because Old Man created us all. He made us of clay, after all, and educated us when we were naked, poor, and without a clue as to how to survive. He taught us what bitterroot does, he taught us what plums taste like. But as I said, he knew that we cannot live off of roots and fruit forever, and so he taught the first people that the animals were food too. 

"These are your herds," he said. "All the little animals that are on the ground; squirrels, rabbits, beavers, skunk - are all good to eat. You do not need to fear to eat their flesh. The birds that fly, too; these I made for you so that you can eat of their flesh." In that way, Old Man kept us alive, and he taught us that we must always honor the animals, our brothers. He taught us to make the weapons we still use, to the horror of the White man. He made bows and arrows, which we still use today. There are reasons we try to avoid the White man's weapons, those instruments of death, those guns that destroyed our culture and imprisoned us. That Old Man would not approve is but one reason, but it is still a good one. 

And those fruits and roots? They are more than just food, as you know. The Government men would like us to believe their medicine is the only medicine, but Old Man taught us otherwise. He took the first people to the prairie and the forests and the swamps. We learned the earth he shaped, and the plants that he had made. He showed us the things that the foliage could do, saying often, "The root of this herb or the leaf of this herb, if gathered in a certain month of the year, is good for a certain sickness." In that way, the people learned about the medicines.

He brought fire to our people too. Some medicines need heated, and the uncooked flesh of our brothers is often dangerous. And with this fire, he taught us to be independent; fire brought us our life, and so did Old Man. There are so many things Old Man gave us--bowls, spirit power, the ability to follow the animals and take their advice, because no longer could he stay to give us everything. Old Man is a wandering spirit, and he had gotten old teaching us everything he knew.

As one last gift, he gave us the buffalo, the buffalo that the White man hid. One day, Old Man will come back from the West, from the mountains he retreated to. Already the words that he spoke before he left have come true. Before he went, child, and this you know, he told us, "I will always take care of you, and some day, I will come back." This we believe, for Old Man keeps his promises, though not always as you would think. He is coyote, after all, and it does not do to forget that. Not unless you want to reap the consequences of what you have sown. In this, I do not believe you would be so foolish.

But then again, we too were foolish, ignoring his last words. He said he'd bring the buffalo back from where he'd hidden them, and this I believe. He warned us though, and we did not take heed. When he returned, he said, he would find us a different people. We would be living in a different world, a world that was not the one that he made for us and taught us to live in.

This is the truth. Look at what we hide, look at what we've lost. Penned in by the government men, the settlers who took our land and the prairie thunder. Who brought weapons we had never seen, weapons Old Man would frown on. They brought war that we fought and we lost. Our language is dying and so are our children. He has seen this, and it breaks his heart. This I know. 

Old Man shaped the world. This doesn't mean that Old Man is perfect, or that he is not without his flaws. Our legends, our stories, that our storytellers tell, that we talk about when the Government men are not around to try and bring Old Man's displeasure on their heads, tell us that he is tricky and sly, so much like the coyote he sometimes is. 

My brother fought in the trenches in the last war, and for this alone, I would not want you to go, my child. The people begged those who left to reconsider. The White man and their military had cut us down already, broken us in a way we are still healing from, and stolen who Old Man made us to be. So why, the elders asked, would he be willing to fight in this war, when they reaped what they had sown? Many said that Old Man, demigod and trickster, had visited the White man, and gotten vengeance for our people. We did not need to meddle in his vengeance, for we are mortal. 

My brother, and the others who left, they said that perhaps it was punishment, but would we really turn our backs on women and children, as they had done to us? Did we want to be no better than those who killed us? They had brought their diseases. They had brought their firewater. Their unfamiliar ways, and called us savages. So too did the enemy soldiers that penned in the White man, who picked off the easy marks. 

The elders gave their blessing, in case they never came home. And they called on Old Man, to keep an eye on our children, our boys, his people. For if anyone could do so, it would be Napi, trickster, god of stories, father of our people. He would protect them, we hoped. We had to hope, to count on something, someone, the White man said never was. We knew better then, and we know better now. Do not forget this, child, for it may save your life. 

They sent letters, you know, in the tongue of the White man. My elders could not read them, but my generation, we'd gone to their schools, we were tortured, and rarely returned, too many buried in unmarked graves, we could translate for them. We did, and that is when we learned that maybe, just maybe, the Old Man had left his mountains. It was not long before they sent word about the trader, the smuggler, the man the White men called Chief. He was no Chief of ours, the letters said, but he was one of us. Even then, we knew our people, more likely to know them since the rez isn't the wide open place the world before was.

No one knew him, though. No one had seen him before. So they watched, and they waited. He sold goods to both sides, he sold hope where there was none, and distraction where it was sorely needed. The elders said that Old Man was walking the trenches. Who else but Old Man would come as a trader, aping the very people who broke us? There is a poetic justice there, the type of trick Old Man would play. Treating the White men as all the same, and giving lie to the belief we owed the White man our bodies in those trenches. 

Napi walked the trenches. Napi treated the White men as if they were one nation, as the White men have often done to us. He sold liquor, a poison that killed them as surely as it killed us. He sold books and other materials that he had no use for. He sold odds and ends that were inferior to those they might have bought at a store, as they had done to us. And he sold hope to the walking dead, for they had destroyed his people with such an emotion. (Hope might destroy us, but sometimes, it's all we've got.) 

Napi did not fight, and no one was surprised. Our boys were buried on foreign ground. Napi brought their stories back later, much later, when he walked among our people for a time. But before that, Napi collected the story of a woman who said that a god was behind the war. She had brought a sword and a shield and many centuries of training to save the people before Armistice was compromised. She had no reason to do this, a woman who, like us, had a culture that flourished without ever seeing the White man. Any man, really, for her people were only ever women. 

She walked among the people, as Napi had, and for a very short time, he believed her mortal, but he liked that she was headstrong like so many of his people. He appreciated the convictions with which she fought. He judged her not unlike his own people during the war that we fought not that many years before. In a time where he would not fight, for there was little to fight when his people had no freedom, he fought alongside her. The men who fought with him--liar, murderer, spy--were brought to his camp by the spy, a man he knew but would never trust. The other three, though, like Napi and like us, knew what it was to be ground down by the White men, trampled, with their lives and land stolen and broken. This is why they fought. I do not know why the spy fought, though they say he fell in love with the demigoddess and she him. But love is not enough to save you, and of them, he was the one to not survive the war.

And so the trickster demigod of stories fought with this woman, who had no fear, and a deep conviction. The White men still speak of the woman who crossed No Man's Land in those days of the war. They do not speak, however, of the fact that she was not the only demigod on that battlefield. She killed those who needed it, as any good warrior would do. And then she killed a god, trusting her men to take care of the rest of the threats.

The cost of peace is high, and you should never forget that. This is why we tell the tale of the smuggler, the liar, the murderer, the spy, and the demigoddess who kept Armistice alive. We speak of the three mortals and the two demigods, and never shall we forget. (The White men never speak of the others, and so we must keep them alive in our stories. This we do gladly, for none should be forgotten. None will be forgotten.) 

Napi came to us, told us the story of the trenches, and then it is said that Napi went back to his mountains when he was done. He was not yet ready to return the buffalo and the life before to us. I am not sure, sometimes, child, if this time will ever come, at least in my lifetime. This life we lead, it weighs on us, but I believe it weighs on Napi too. We have tried to keep our culture alive, and our children protected. Often we fail. And now, the White men are killing each other again, and it will come to our people. The demigoddess already moves among the battlefields, disguised as someone else. This we hear, for Napi made us storytellers, able to collect stories others might not hear. 

Never forget that Napi brought life, but so too can he bring death. Do not forget that he will again one day walk among us in this world, among our people. Perhaps, though he has not been back since the end of the last war, he walks among us nonetheless, following us to the schools, to the killing fields, to the bottom of a bottle. Perhaps that is what the old stories really mean. Perhaps. 

From the last war, we know he answers when we call, and call again we are. The White men take our children again, and half of you boys are headed into this war. The rest, probably eventually, and may the gods have mercy where they did not before. May war not sunder your soul, and remember our teachings. You do not want to roam the world, a ghost forevermore. We will not receive your bodies back, so we prepare your souls for the journey now. 

The draft is the worst word I have heard since I was very young, and my elders taught me the stories of how the White man trapped us and tried to destroy us. Since the boarding schools started even, and the White men sought to eradicate our ways. We are more resilient than they could ever imagine. Remember that always. 

Call on Napi. Call on his wisdom, but call too on the connection he shared with the one called Diana. He kept hope alive here, even though he was far away. He taught us through his stories that even broken, we are still his people. And so many of us, we have fought to stay alive. The White man hates that. 

Remember that as you go to fight a war not your own, children. Remember the stories Napi gave us, and remember to serve those who deserve it. Not that I think the White man will give you many of those. But they might surprise me yet.

And always, always, remember the smuggler, the liar, the murderer, and the spy. Remember the woman who united them. 

Remember Napi, walking the trenches.

**Author's Note:**

> As a Native storyteller, the moment Chief introduced himself as Napi, I was beside myself with glee. He literally introduces himself as the Blackfoot demigod of storytelling, a trickster who created the world. In the origin stories, he is referred to as Old Man, though his proper name is Napi (there are several variations on the name; I went with the one that the Blackfoot reviewer at Indian Country Today used). You see the latter in newer tales. But if you take him literally, that means Diana wasn't the only demigod on that battlefield, and since this wouldn't have been his war (not even a little, as the movie itself points out), why was he there? 
> 
> So I've spent the entire time since then trying to wrangle that answer into a story.
> 
> This didn't want to be a piece that was utterly linear, in part because it's the last story the elder is going to tell before the boys listening to this go off to war, drafted into a war that she knows may very well kill them. It's very much the way an Elder tells a story, occasionally doubling back on itself. And if I had a dollar for every time an elder called a fifty year old man a child or said the word remember, I would definitely have rent money. The two origin stories I reference are Old Man and the Beginning of the World (http://ocbtracker.com/ladypixel/oldworld.html) (and yes, bits of Napi's specific declarations come from this one) and I also referenced (https://www.mysteriesofcanada.com/first-nations/blackfoot-legends-napi/). The latter isn't the story as it's told, but the story is barely a passing mention anyway in the fic.
> 
> As I am not Blackfoot, I do not have enough familiarity with the language to use Blackfoot words in here, or else I would have.


End file.
